


The Artist is Present

by dreamofhorses



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF, Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Marina Abramovic, Performance Art, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-05-30 13:06:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 17,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15097316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamofhorses/pseuds/dreamofhorses
Summary: An AU where Timmy is a performance artist whose works are based on the oeuvre of Marina Abramovic. All necessary context is given in the fic, though, so familiarity with her isn't required. I based parts of Armie on Marina's partner Ulay but mostly Armie is...himself. There's a lot of 1970's-80's art world goodness, a little timeline manipulation, and a dash of pretension because you can't have performance art without it.





	1. Rhythm 0 - Manhattan, 1974 - Armie

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lookingforatardis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lookingforatardis/gifts).



_Armie_

The humid July air clings to Armie Hammer’s skin like almost-forgotten guilt. He knows New York City summers by now, and if it’s this warm at 7pm it will only get worse. He’s had a long day at the office, and while it’s Friday, if this heat follows him all the way home he’ll have no energy to enjoy the start of his weekend. He knows he’s earned the time off; running a boutique publishing house means he’s expected to oversee every detail, and his perfectionist streak often leads him to get his hands dirtier with details than is strictly necessary. He’s listened to pitches all day from potential editors for a Russian literature anthology he hopes to publish, and a few hours away from the office, thinking of something else entirely, is what he needs now to let his brain relax and make the right decision.

 

A gust of cool air interrupts Armie’s thinking. In fact, it damn near knocks him off the sidewalk. Two patrons of the building behind him have acted on sophisticated cost-benefit analysis to exit an air-conditioned gallery for a cigarette on the muggy sidewalk.

 

“That’s insane, what he’s doing in there,” one of them says, shaking her long jet-black bangs out of her face while lighting up. Armie’s ears perk up and his walk slows. He pulls out his wallet, pretends to check something on the back of a credit card so that he has an excuse to listen to the rest of the conversation. Armie’s been getting more into art lately, especially now that the downtown galleries are showing such interesting stuff, and if this show is any good maybe he’ll drop in and pick up a piece for the living room. Plus, the gallery seems climate controlled.

 

Armie elbows past the smokers to the rickety metal door of the gallery. When he opens it the air is so cold it makes him shiver, but he’s immediately confronted with a set of industrial metal stairs leading up. As he climbs, it gets warmer, until when he reaches the top of the stairs it’s only a few degrees cooler than outside. Armie can immediately tell that’s because of the mass of people packed into the tiny gallery space. He cranes his head to see what everyone’s looking at; at 6’5” he’s usually able to tell pretty quickly. All he sees is a single bright lamp dangling from the ceiling, illuminating something in the middle of the crowd. Armie prepares his usual routine of elbowing through crowds; they usually part like the sea for a guy his size.

 

“Waiver, sir?” There’s a tug at his elbow from a gallery employee. Armie’s not surprised he didn’t see her before; she’s petite, so Armie’s got a couple of feet on her, and her black outfit and bangs blend in perfectly with the painted cinderblock wall behind her.

 

“Waiver?” Armie asks.

 

“To release us from any harm you may undergo during the performance.”

 

_Oh, performance art. Not exactly something I can take away and hang up in the office._ Typically Armie finds this sort of thing stuffy and solipsistic. But the awe in the woman’s tone outside as she said what was happening in here was _insane_ stuck with him, and Armie feels a bubble of curiosity and inevitability grow inside him. He knows this feeling; sometimes he swears he loves it. His mind has caught on something, like a loose thread on rough wood, and he _will_ follow it until his curiosity is satisfied. Sometimes it leads him to a new book idea. Sometimes it leads him to catch a society dame’s eye on the Upper West Side, leads to an afternoon in a penthouse hotel room with champagne and bubble baths and making love to someone experienced enough to know what that means. Sometimes it leads him to accept an author’s invitation to a book party, an author with flashing eyes and five o’clock shadow and a knowing gleam in his eye, and sometimes it leads him to follow when the author cocks his head toward the exit, toward an alley, toward somewhere they can touch.

 

And now, that feeling is leading Armie to the center of this room. He signs the waiver absently and hands it back to the employee, then begins shifting through the crowd. Such a big guy moving politely and whispering “excuse me” under his breath always seems to get Armie through crowds just on shock value alone. Finally he reaches a midway point in the crowd where he can see over enough heads to know what they’re all pointing toward. There’s a long table in the middle of the room. It’s covered in _stuff_ , paint and a newspaper and a knife and bones and an apple. A rose. A feather. A pile of chains. Armie feels like he’s looking at his grandmother’s basement dumped out onto a table. What’s so _insane_ about that? Then Armie rakes his eyes forward, to the center of the room, to what’s in the center of the spotlight holding everyone’s rapt attention.

 

In the center of the room stands the most beautiful man Armie has ever seen. He’s completely nude. And he’s pointing a gun at his own head.

 

 


	2. Rhythm 0 - Manhattan, 1974 - Timmy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Rhythm 0 piece from Timmy's perspective.
> 
> I meant to update this yesterday and life happened! But I'm hoping to update on Fridays from now on.

_ Timmy _

 

They say your entire life flashes before you when you’re about to die.

 

Timmy now feels like an expert witness in whether or not this is true.

 

And what he would tell you, would tell anyone who asked in later years, once they heard the story of this single moment and the years that Timmy lived in that moment, is that this both does and does not happen.

 

He’d pictured it unspooling before him, luxuriously, like a medieval scroll or a reel of film tumbling from a projectionist’s hands. What he gets instead are sharp, staccato memories, shaved of context, regular and short and changing every time his pounding heart presses new blood through his brain. His mother’s face, silhouetted by the sun as she swung him in circles in Central Park. His sister, on stage in a tutu and tights, bowing, his parents nudging him to clap and the idea forming in his mind,  _ people do this, they stand on stage and let others witness them, and then people thank them for it _ . The first time anyone ever clapped for  _ him _ , an arts high school play, the rush he felt, and on its heels the thought  _ what if I wasn’t just saying someone else’s words? What if these people were just witnessing  _ **_me_ ** _ , my mind, and I let them in, and changed them, and they thanked me?  _ A girl, a few girls. A kiss in an elevator high above New York, the kiss and the height making Timmy swear the sky was looking up at him with envy. The first time someone touched him in a way that made him catch his breath, that felt so good that for a split second his body forgot it needed air to live. A boy, a few boys, a few more boys than girls. Fumbling under a tree in a pile of fallen leaves, something that started as wrestling until Timmy saw every color of autumn in the other boy’s eyes. A winter night outside a waterfront club in Chelsea, Timmy’s hand in a man’s leather pants, the man’s lips at his throat. The same man, calling Timmy months later, “You’ve got ideas and I’ve got a gallery and I think we should work together. And I’m not just saying that because you give good head.”

 

And Timmy took it seriously, the use of the space and the respect he’d seemed to earn from a guy he met in a back room in Chelsea and never expected to see again. Gradually he realized he didn’t want to make people witness him. That was something he would save, something he would ration. He wanted to make people witness themselves. Timmy gathered everything he could think of and then gathered its exact opposite. Sugar and salt, honey and wine, yarn and wire, matches and water. A gun--razor blades. A rose--an ax. A mirror--a camera. He stopped at 72, liking the roundness of the number, the way it splits neatly into  _ two times three, times three times two _ like a waterfall cascading home, like soul mates locking eyes. Timmy had carted all those things to the gallery, laid them out reverentially in rows on the table, breathing deeply. As he touched the knife, the gun, the razor blades, he realized those things would probably hurt him, might kill him, that night, and that he was accepting the responsibility of witnessing that, too. Suddenly he was glad that for the next six hours he wouldn’t have to think of anything to say.

 

Six hours. Standing in the middle of a room, empty of everything but Timmy and the objects and potential. It had been calm at first, just people standing in Timmy’s personal space, moving his arms, placing things in his hands for him to hold. Around the halfway point, people starting cutting Timmy’s clothes off with razor blades. He didn’t react to it like he thought he would. It was actually harder to stay calm, breathe evenly, and stare straight ahead when people did the mundane things. His mind had to fight to stay interested. As soon as someone approached his bicep with a razor blade drawn, he needed no help focusing his attention. It took only about half an hour for all of his clothing to be cut away, sometimes in tiny scraps and sometimes in larger swaths, his underwear cut away from his most intimate areas by a man whose name he would never know and whose face he didn’t see. There was half an hour left in the show when a woman placed the single bullet from the table into the pistol and wrapped Timmy’s long fingers around it. Her date had snickered, moved Timmy’s arm into the air as if expecting to meet resistance, placed the gun against Timmy’s temple, and curled his index finger against the trigger. Then the couple steps back to watch Timmy’s reaction.

Timmy blinks. He expected this, and in a way feels that it’s the easiest part so far. There’s an inevitability to this, a feeling of being swept along on another’s intentions, and his eyes even start to relax their unrelenting focus on the spot at the back of the room, at the top of the stairs, where he’s been staring the whole time.

 

Then that spot moves.

 

Timmy’s been staring at it for so long, memorizing its unceasing banality, that when a head of blonde hair moves into view he almost startles and ruins the performance. When a set of blue eyes follows it, skirting nervously around the room, clearly not knowing where he is or where he’s supposed to look, Timmy feels the cosmic ripple of the man’s presence. The universe around him dissolves into primes.

 

An unfamiliar sensation starts at the base of Timmy’s spine and it takes him a moment to realize he’s thinking  _ I’m no longer ready to die here, now, for this, _ and as soon as he thinks it he knows he’s  _ fucked _ because that means this man is now what he’s living for. As the man elbows his way through the room it’s all Timmy can do not to break focus and follow him with his eyes. Timmy notices his heartbeat spike in a way that it hasn’t since the first hour of this whole experience, and when he thinks  _ funny, he’s already affecting me more than the touch of a gun or a razor blade _ he files that thought away to be dealt with later. Right now he has to keep a lid on things enough to complete this performance.

 

_ Breathe _ , he tells himself, even as in the corner of his eye he sees the man approaching the table of objects.  _ Breathe _ . Timmy can’t see what object the man has taken from the table, not without moving his gaze from the spot where it’s focused all night, and which he has a new affection for since that’s the spot where the man first entered his life. But he won’t pretend he’s not relieved when he feels a presence at his side and a hand, a hand so warm and large and comforting Timmy instantly knows it could blanket any problem the world could throw, closes around his bare bicep and lowers the gun away from Timmy’s head. He pulls the gun from Timmy’s hand and Timmy hears a comforting clunk as it’s replaced on the table. He won’t pretend it’s not a relief to know that thing isn’t pointing at him anymore, but he’s also extremely aware that his heart rate has not lowered in the slightest.

 

He doesn’t even hear the man’s return to his side; it’s his breath on Timmy’s shoulder that gives it away. That, and his smell. He smells like a luxury train car, leather and spice and experience, with an undercurrent of something fresh and cold like a mountainside under a January moon. The world outside will smell like this now when Timmy steps into it after this performance, a world that is both exactly the same as it had been before and cruelly yet thrillingly different.

 

There is suddenly a blast of sensation at the base of Timmy’s neck so intense and sudden that he fears his knees will buckle. The man is dragging the petals of the rose up Timmy’s neck, to where his hair curls behind his ears, back down to where his shoulder blades meet his spine, and for two seconds Timmy thinks he’s going to throw his whole art career away to be able to grab this man’s hand, hold it to his face, kiss it as long and hard as he wants to and say  _ where do we go from here, take me, I don’t even care as long as it’s we and not I who are going there. _ When the man removes the rose from Timmy’s spine the next breath he draws is shaky, and he knows no one sees because they’re too far away and the movement was minute, but he also knows that the man was close enough to hear it and know what effect he had.

 

The man circles around until he’s standing in front of Timmy and  _ my god he’s tall _ , he blocks out the light bulb and the crowd and the gallery around them and Timmy thinks that’s a pretty good representation of his own mental state right now, honestly. Since no one else can see where his gaze is, he allows himself to shift his focus so that he’s making eye contact with the man. His blue eyes are the color of the moonlit snow that underlies his scent, and the concern and fascination Timmy sees in the man’s gaze are intoxicating. He raises his left hand and brings the bottle of water which had been on the table to Timmy’s lips. It’s complicated for Timmy to drink any of it without moving, but finally they find an angle which allows the man to tip the bottle between Timmy’s slightly parted lips, letting gravity do the rest so all Timmy does is swallow. The water is sweet and smooth and exactly what he needed after all the stress and adrenaline of the past hours and Timmy feels an immeasurable gratitude toward this man whose first instinct was to arouse but whose second was to protect.  _ I could get used to that _ , Timmy thinks. He swallows once, twice, and then a perverse playfulness overtakes him and he ever so slightly twitches his bottom lip, so that some of the water misses his mouth, trickling toward his chin from the corner of his mouth.

 

The man’s eyes go dark instantly, a shadow falling over the alpine blue, and the corner of his mouth quirks up in a mischievous smile. Timmy’s pretty sure he fails at masking a similar expression in his own eyes but wins the battle to keep his mouth from showing his emotions. The man tips the bottle down, holding the neck of it in his fingers while his thumb swipes over Timmy’s chin and up to his lips, wiping the water away and then lingering one, two, three seconds longer than needed at the corner of Timmy’s mouth. The man smiles, rubs his thumb in a tiny circle on Timmy’s cheek, and then he’s gone.

 

Ten minutes later the gallery owner announces that the piece is ending, and as soon as Timmy takes a step forward, off the prescribed spot where he’d been standing for hours, the crowd turns as one, unable to meet his eyes, and awkwardly shuffles away. No one waits. No one asks questions. They seem unwilling to regard him as a person after seeing him as an object. And Timmy knows that’s the point, knows that’s the sort of thing he was hoping to witness, but he can’t deny the twinge of disappointment that the tall blonde man hadn’t stuck around afterward. What had felt like a dance, something formed together between the two of them, must have just been a lightning strike, random and unrepeatable but illuminating for a brief moment. The gallery owner chats with Timmy while Timmy gets dressed, makes sure he’s feeling all right ( _ I’ll have a lot to process but that’s what I wanted, no no, I’m good, thank you _ ). He hands Timmy a bottle of water and they share sandwiches before Timmy heads home, and the nourishment starts to make him feel human again.

 

When Timmy steps onto the sidewalk the night heat hits him instantly, like an idea you know is bad at the same time you know you’ll follow through. He runs his hands through his hair hoping to fluff it out before it’s weighed down by sweat, and turns left toward the subway station.

 

The man from the gallery is leaning there and Timmy doesn’t even think about it before allowing the huge, stupid grin he had repressed in the gallery to spread across his face.

 

The man from the gallery answers with a pretty big, stupid grin of his own.

 

He’s twirling Timmy’s rose between his fingers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm dreamofhorses42 on Tumblr, come say hi!


	3. Interludes I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Timmy? Say something?” What he means is _say you want me. One word from you and I’ll give up ten thousand book parties and galley proofs and respectable cocktails to kiss you once under a Central Park streetlight in the pouring rain._
> 
>  
> 
> "That’s wonderful news.”
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> (My muse decided this thing wasn't complex enough and wanted me to throw Dunkirk-style time manipulations into the mix. Updating early as I'm on vacation this weekend, so have a peek into the boys' lives in between the major works Timmy creates.)

**_One hour later_ **

 

_ Timmy _

 

Armie chooses a bar that’s plain, elegant, dark despite a wall of windows, and they take a back booth. Timmy feels more comfortable in this bar than any other bar, any gallery, any  _ bedroom _ he’s been in so far in his life, and it takes him a moment to realize it’s because the bar is filled with other pairs of men. Pairs of men holding hands, touching each other’s legs beneath the table, kissing…”I know a lot of places like this,” Armie murmurs, and when Timmy meets his eyes there’s sadness there. The wish to kiss Armie, openly, with all the light that has been stolen from this place shining down on them, is so strong that Timmy deals with it the only way he knows how. He talks, telling Armie about the show, where he got the idea for this piece, anything so he doesn’t say  _ yours are the eyes I want to see the world through _ . Armie’s still holding the rose when they stand to leave. At the door Timmy impulsively stands on tiptoe, presses his lips to Armie’s, quickly, with a breath, fickle as memory. Armie draws the rose over Timmy’s neck again, the stem this time, and the thorns draw a thin, tiny line of blood.

 

Later, Timmy will wonder if this was a sign.

  
  


**_One month later_ **

 

_ Armie _

 

“Telephone! It’s that guy, I think his name’s Timothy but he always says it like he’s drunk? You want me to tell him you’re out again?”

 

Armie sighs. “No, Evelyn. I’ll take it. Thank you.” He picks up his office extension, kicking his office door closed with his foot as he does. He lowers his voice. “Timmy?”

 

“Hey. I hope I haven’t been bothering you. I wasn’t going to call again if you didn’t take it this time. I just...I had a really good time with you and wanted to say so. I...I would get drinks with you again sometime, if you want.”

 

Armie makes sure he’s sitting down, picks up a pen from his desk to keep his hands occupied. “No, no, you’ve only called a couple of times. It’s fine, I gave you my business card after all. It’s just...I had a really good time with you too. I really did. You’re a brilliant artist and such interesting company and--well, you have to know you’re beautiful.” Timmy laughs, a husky, breathy bark on the other end of the line. “But...I just started seeing someone, her family is in publishing and she’s very...sweet, and it could really be good for me on a lot of levels, and I’m afraid to rock that boat right now, if that makes any sense.” Once it’s out of his mouth, Armie swears the color drains from the room. “Timmy? Say something?” What he means is  _ say you want me. One word from you and I’ll give up ten thousand book parties and galley proofs and respectable cocktails to kiss you once under a Central Park streetlight in the pouring rain _ .

 

“That’s wonderful news.” Timmy’s voice grows flat, but not unconcerned. Armie swears he hears  _ understanding _ there, which only makes it harder as Armie’s not sure he understands it himself yet.

 

Armie opens his mouth and what almost comes out is  _ do you mind? _ , but that would be pushing, pleading to hear what Timmy has not said despite the chance Armie gave him, so what he says instead is, “Maybe I’ll come to another of your shows. I really love seeing your work. Take care.”

 

He hangs up the phone quickly so Timmy doesn’t hear his ragged breaths slide into sobs.

  
  


**_One year later_ **

 

_ Timmy _

 

Timmy dusts off his hands, kicking the box of books at his feet into a corner until he can find time to unpack it.

 

“Where do you want this?” booms a voice behind him. Timmy jumps at the sound.  _ I’ve really gotta teach my friends to use inside voices _ , he thinks.

 

“Just set it by the bed, Ansel,” Timmy says when he sees the lamp in his friend’s hand. “I think that’s it, we’ve got it all. Thanks for helping me move.”

 

“Hey, I get it, this place is a steal,” Ansel says, flopping down on Timmy’s couch and propping his feet up on a box of LPs. “I don’t blame you for jumping on it. But you did, uh, promise me beer?”

 

Timmy rolls his eyes but crosses the cavernous space to the refrigerator. He still can’t believe his old gallery owner had thought of him when this loft space opened up in Chelsea, right next to two places that have shown Timmy’s work in the past months. He only hopes this doesn’t mean he’ll run into Armie. Who knows which galleries a publishing-world darling might frequent or which hip downtown coffee shops he might choose for meetings with writers?

 

_ It was one night. You were emotional after the piece, not in your right mind. Imagining things. He’s made his choice. _ Timmy grabs two beers from the fridge. He’s been making the same arguments in his head for months, he should--

 

“Dude, are you still spinning your wheels over that Armie guy?” Ansel interrupts. “You’ve even got a particular  _ face _ you make now when you’re just  _ thinking _ about him. It was months ago. You’re young, you’re hot. You gotta let go and  _ live _ , man.”

 

Timmy hands one beer to Ansel and settles down on the other end of the couch. “It’s just--the connection we had. It was so strong, it was so rare. That  _ never _ happens. And he just...gave it up. For what was expected of him. I would never force a choice like that on him. And I can’t help knowing there was a moment, it has to come down to a  _ second _ , really, when he chose between her and me. And I can’t help feeling if only I could have  _ touched _ him at that moment, even just to brush his hand--”

 

Then Timmy stops talking. He has an idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm dreamofhorses42 on Tumblr, come say hi!


	4. Imponderabilia, Los Angeles, 1977 -- Armie and Timmy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s Timmy. Nude. And Armie’s going to have to get past him if he ever hopes to leave this gallery.
> 
>  
> 
> _Apologies for missing my typical update schedule as I was on the trip of a lifetime in Crema last weekend. Putting both perspectives in one chapter as a make-up treat!_

IMPONDERABILIA - Los Angeles, 1977

 

_ Armie _

 

_ Fuck, even winter in Los Angeles is hotter than a Manhattan summer. Why the hell did I come here again? _ Armie asks himself, fanning ineffectively at his neck with a sheaf of papers before dropping them in his briefcase.  _ Oh right, temperamental author who won’t leave L.A. if people’s auras have been looking dark lately, but who happens to write some of the most fascinating historical fiction we’ve ever published. At least I just have one more day here and then I can get back to a corner of the world that makes sense. Even the streets in L.A. aren’t on a grid. It’s amazing anyone gets anywhere. _

Lost in thought, again, he’s hit by a blast of air from a door opening to his left. Two men in corduroy exit a plate-glass door, one of them already rolling a joint from ingredients found in his pocket. Armie experiences an intense sense of deja vu, and when he realizes why his stomach drops, and it feels like it doesn’t stop at his feet, like it keeps falling through the sidewalk to the prehistoric tar that runs underneath Los Angeles like bad blood, that all the commemorative parks in the world won’t keep at bay forever. 

“There’s no way I’m trying that sober,” one of the men says to his companion. “Even this,” and he taps the joint, “might not be strong enough.” The two men duck into an alley next to the art gallery, and Armie feels it again: walking through those plate glass doors will change his life. And the inexplicable, irresistible pull he feels only shows him how little that means he feels for the life he has, no matter what he tells himself.  _ Lightning never strikes twice _ , he thinks,  _ but what if? What if I could walk through that door, see that hair I’ve dreamed about for three years, smell him again, touch him this time without using some stupid rose as a pretense?  _

Armie reaches for the gallery door and tugs it open.

He’s confronted first with a rectangle of cream canvas with a simple sentence on it: “Everything is purged from this painting but art, no ideas have entered this work.” The statement hits him in the gut and he stops in front of the painting to think. It’s been a while since Armie has been in a gallery, a couple of years in fact, and as soon as he starts to do the math he realizes why.  _ Timmy _ . He hasn’t been in a gallery since the day he stood before a man who had stripped everything away from himself and offered himself to Armie--and since the day Armie had been stupid enough to walk away.

He rounds the corner of the gallery and ducks into a dimly lit side room where a white cube hangs suspended in a corner with no visible means of support. It takes Armie’s breath away, the simplicity of it, the independence of the tiny cube of light, and he realizes there are no guards here, no one to keep him from reaching out and touching it.  _ Didn’t work so well the last time you wanted to touch something pure just to see if it crumbled at your touch, did it? _ his inner voice complains, but he ignores it, ignores the fact that he can almost see Timmy’s rose in his hand as he reaches out to touch the pristine white cube. And then he feels...nothing. There was no cube at all; he’s put his hand into a projected beam of light at just the right angle to create an illusion of shape and form that was never there.  _ They should call this piece  _ **_Sarah_ ** _ , _ he thinks, trying not to be bitter about how things had turned out between him and the publisher’s daughter he’d abandoned Timmy for.  _ It  looks for all the world like something is there to the outside viewer, but push on it anywhere and you get nothingness. There’s not even enough there for it to fall apart _ . Not six months later he’d just stood up after dinner at her apartment one night, a dinner no different than any other and perhaps that was the point, and opened his mouth to say  _ there was a man, I saw all of him and I wanted it, and I don’t know how to find him but I don’t know how to stop until I do, and there’s no room for anything else in my head or my heart or my life  _ but what came out was, “I just can’t do this. I’m tired of pretending and I bet you are too,” and then he’d walked out the door and never come back.

When he re-enters the main gallery his eye is drawn to a piece in black and white that’s on the wall near the exit. A reproduction of a group of men engaging in the type of horseplay that was really an excuse to touch each other dominates the photo, overlaid with the text “You construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men.” Armie barks a laugh at that, considering the lines his own thoughts had been running along just then, and shakes his head while staring at the floor.

It’s then that he sees a familiar shape in the gallery exit doorway to his left. A nude man is standing in the doorway, his back against the frame, and it’s a measure of Armie’s absorption in that image that it takes him a good ten seconds to realize there’s also a nude woman pressed against the other side of the door. It would appear he hasn’t seen all the artwork on display quite yet. But he would know the curves of those calves, the mess of curls atop the man’s head.

It’s Timmy. Nude. And Armie’s going to have to get past him if he ever hopes to leave this gallery.

  
  
  


_ Timmy _

 

Turns out being naked in a gallery full of people is a lot easier when you have company.

After he’d hatched the idea for  _ Imponderabilia _ it had taken him almost a year to find a woman willing to enact it with him. She had to be willing to stand inside a doorway opposite Timmy, nude, while strangers chose one of them to face while exiting a room. Any woman choosing to perform the piece would find it difficult, but finally Saoirse, a brilliant Irish performance artist whose work Timmy had seen at a Green Street gallery and adored, let herself be talked into it. Timmy explained his inspiration to her, explained that he was exorcising Armie by forcing himself to watch, hundreds of times per day, as people replicated the choice Armie had made.  _ Left or right. Male or female. Expected or surprising. Your heart or a crowd’s pointed fingers. _

They’d performed the piece in New York to great acclaim and being partners in it had cemented their friendship. Staring into someone’s eyes for hours while nude will do that to you, Timmy learned. In a rare move, galleries in other parts of the country started requesting the piece, and soon Timmy and Saoirse had performed it in three other states. When the Los Angeles gallery inquired, they’d treated themselves to the most expensive bottle of champagne they could find and toasted a chance to get out of the frigid New York winter for the land of tall palm trees and taller egos. The piece was received fantastically, the gallery owner promising to book any new works by them together or separately.

Timmy knows evening is falling on the last day of their show. By now he knows it from the way shadows fall on Saoirse’s shoulders, the precise way his legs ache after hours of standing, the sound of the gallery owner gently herding the last patrons out the door. Timmy reflects on the day, as he always does at this time, while the gallery is winding down. He thinks about how many women choose to face him versus how many men, the little mishaps that make each day different and send a twinkle of amusement dancing through Saoirse’s eyes.

The gallery owner passes by and Timmy calls, “Closed for the day?”

“One more left,” the owner says softly, so the patron doesn’t overhear and feel rushed. “He’ll be headed your way shortly and then we can close up.”

Timmy watches the owner leave his peripheral vision. He hears a noise in the adjoining room from the final gallery visitor and figures  _ fuck it, last visitor, last day of the show, might as well look at someone besides Saoirse for once in this damn show _ and glances to his left.

Armie’s standing there staring at him--has been standing there staring at him for god knows how long.

As soon as they lock eyes everything that ever went wrong for Timmy in the past three years resolves itself.

Armie moves toward him so slowly that Timmy thinks at first that his instincts are right and that this is a dream. He locks eyes again with Saoirse and inclines his head slightly towards Armie. She widens her eyes, gives him a quizzical look which Timmy answers with a nod. Of course Saoirse knows who Armie is. Timmy’s cried on her shoulder about it, brought her to the movies with him when he’s afraid a love story will remind him too much of Armie and he wants company. When Timmy glances back toward Armie he’s surprised to find Armie almost at his shoulder, and when he breathes in Armie’s scent at the close distance it almost buckles his knees.

_ Don’t look away. This is the only possible way this should end and if you look away you’ll break it just as surely as dropping a vase or burning a canvas. Don’t fuck this up, Tim. _ These thoughts and others cycle through his head as he stares at Armie, the one person whose reaction to this choice he thought was set in stone, whose choice had spawned Timmy’s desire to see it recreated endlessly until he could convince himself that there were people in the world who followed their hearts, that there might be someone else like Armie out there whose heart would lead him to Timmy.

And now Armie’s heart has led him here, and he’s approaching the doorway, and he’s turning.

He turns toward Timmy.

It’s the choice Timmy’s been waiting for for three long years.

He feels Armie pressed against him,  _ all the way against him _ , and the man is so goddamn tall that Timmy feels  _ protected _ somehow even though Armie’s clothed and Timmy’s not, and just as Timmy thinks  _ memorize this, you will want to recreate this feeling when you fall asleep every night for the rest of your life and it may not come again  _ he realizes Armie isn’t moving.

He is the one person who has come to this passage and made his choice but is not leaving.

Armie lifts one hand and places it slowly, carefully, on Timmy’s bare hip. His thumb rubs a slow circle over Timmy’s hipbone. They both breathe in and out, and each seems to decide it’s rude to point out to the other how shaky their breaths are.

“I’ve wanted to do this for--” Armie starts.

“Three years?” Timmy dares a smile.

“My whole life,” Armie finishes.

There’s a rustle behind Armie, and Timmy realizes that Saoirse has left the doorway, gotten dressed, and is making “let’s-go-for-drinks” hand motions at the gallery owner behind Armie’s back. Timmy exhales and leans his head forward into Armie’s chest, knocking into him a few times until Armie reaches up and affectionately laces his hands through Timmy’s hair.

Then Saoirse and the owner leave, locking the door and turning off all but a few low-watt emergency lights, and Armie and Timmy are alone in the fading light.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm dreamofhorses42 on Tumblr, come say hi!


	5. Interludes II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In the distance, a train whistle blows. Armie’s head snaps up to the window, but he can’t even see where the train is arriving from, much less guess at where it’s going._
> 
>  
> 
> I'll be back on a regular updating schedule for this one now. Had to jump forward quite a bit in the timeline here to get to the next performance art bit so I hope the chronology makes sense.
> 
> The song Timmy plays on the record player is "One of Us Cannot be Wrong" by Leonard Cohen, in case you'd like to set the mood.

**_One hour later_ **

 

_ Armie _

 

It shouldn’t be this hard to kiss Timmy again. They’re seated on the floor of the gallery, leaning against the back wall, sharing some of the gallery owner’s wine straight from the bottle. (“It’s fine,” Timmy had said in a tone that meant it wasn’t fine at all but that Timmy enjoyed talking his way out of situations where wine was missing.) Timmy isn’t fully dressed yet; he’s only put on a robe that was hanging in the gallery owner’s office, and Armie’s trying not to read anything into the fact that Timmy isn’t dressed yet but he’s got a feeling it definitely means something that Timmy isn’t dressed yet.

Timmy’s mouth is moving. Armie decides he should either listen to what Timmy is saying or give that mouth something else to do. In the back of his mind he knows he should be shocked at himself for thinking that way but that feeling is swept out of the way by disbelief that he has found Timmy again, gratitude that he has this time with Timmy,  _ who knows how long it will last but I’m here now, he’s here now, I can smell him again and that’s more than I ever dared to dream _ , and finally a pure physical fascination with the tangle of glossy hair, slender limbs, and rosy lips next to him.

The lips say, “And so I made it for you.”

Armie blinks. Timmy is staring up at him now and when Armie meets his gaze it’s suddenly impossible to think of anything else. “I made this piece for you, thinking I’d never see you get to make the right choice. So I watched everyone else make your choice for you. But now you’re here.”

Armie’s voice comes out as a whisper, and Timmy leans closer to hear. He smells of mint and fresh soap and Armie’s glad he’s sitting down. “Are you happy I came here?” Armie asks.

“I would kiss you if I could,” Timmy replies. “I’m just...not sure that’s something you want. And I don’t want to push you.”

Suddenly it’s Armie who’s pushing, one hand on Timmy’s shoulder, winding up his neck until Armie’s hand twists through those curls, pulling Timmy’s head back, and Timmy just  _ goes with it _ , just melts into it, and when Armie touches his lips to Timmy’s the shower of sensation makes him tremble. When Timmy feels this he moans softly into Armie’s mouth, curves himself into Armie’s touch, presses the entire length of himself in the chenille robe against Armie, and Armie’s world stops on its axis.

Armie isn’t sure how long the kiss lasts. As long as a thunderstorm in a desert that hasn’t seen rain in three long years. As long as the first blink of a man waking from a three-year coma. Timmy’s lips are pliant, soft, yet insistent, Timmy’s tongue flicking behind Armie’s teeth, and Armie feels himself grow hard at the thought of what else that tongue could do. Timmy feels that, has to feel it, pressed up against Armie like he is, and when Armie pulls away from the kiss to catch his breath Timmy’s hand skates up Armie’s thigh until it reaches his erection.

Armie blinks.

“Am I offending you?” Timmy asks, with a twinkle in his eyes that says he knows the answer to this question before he even asked it.

Armie’s never been so turned on he can’t speak, but when he opens his mouth to answer Timmy he finds out that this state of mind is indeed possible. He licks his lips, swallows hard. “No. You know you’re not,” he whispers.

“Then come here,” Timmy whispers, grabbing Armie’s hand and tugging him to his feet. Right now, Armie would follow him anywhere in the world. Timmy leads him into the owner’s office, a small windowless nook in the back corner of the gallery. It’s lit by a Tiffany-style table lamp depicting a waterfall, and against one wall is a plush couch in a green floral pattern. Timmy gestures to the couch, smiling shyly, and Armie sits on it, sinks into it really, and finds himself curiously unmotivated to look for reasons ever to get up again. He watches Timmy’s long limbs move inside the soft robe like ripples beneath the surface of a pond. There’s a record player in the corner, and Timmy crosses to it, drops the needle without even looking at what’s on the platter, and the room fills with the sound of plaintive strings and a low voice...

_...I heard of a saint who had loved you _

_ I studied all night in his school _

_ He taught that the duty of lovers is to tarnish the golden rule…. _

Timmy crosses back to the couch, settles himself next to Armie, touches Armie’s knee with his own. He covers one of Armie’s feet with his own, smiles shyly.

“I’m nervous,” Armie says, because it is true and because feeling Timmy’s foot on his own has reduced him to nothing but truth. Truth, and sensation.

“Me too,” Timmy smiles, leaning toward Armie,  _ how does that robe make him sexier when he’s wearing clothes than when he’s standing before me naked _ , and then Timmy’s mouth is on his again, nipping at him, catching Armie’s top lip between his lips and then between his teeth, biting gently but with promise. Armie reaches for him, slides his hand inside the robe and onto Timmy’s leg,  _ his skin, _ and he can’t even tell which is softer, the fabric or Timmy, and he curls his hand, digs his nails a bit into Timmy’s thigh. Timmy yelps, and then moans against Armie’s mouth, and throws his leg over Armie so he’s straddling him, pushing him further into the couch and giving him even less reason to want to leave it.

Armie slides his hands up Timmy’s legs, around his ass, Timmy moaning against his mouth, biting desperately at Armie’s lips and neck, and Armie digs his hands into Timmy’s hips and pushes down, hard, so that Timmy can’t help feeling how hard Armie is for him, feel Armie pressing against him, and when he feels it Timmy giggles against Armie’s neck, breathlessly. Suddenly Armie can’t wait another minute, he’s waited three years and in the next five seconds the universe might take all this back and he’ll be damned if he lets  _ that _ happen, so he pulls at the belt of Timmy’s robe, murmurs “off off off  _ off off _ ” as he undoes the knot of the robe, slides it off Timmy’s shoulders, flings it into the void currently marked in his brain as  _ parts of the world that aren’t Timmy _ .

And then Timmy’s there, on his lap, limbs surrounding him on all sides,  _ reaching for Armie like he’s dreamed of for three years, especially when the nights are coldest and his bed feels most empty. _ His chestnut curls are tinted blue by the glass of the lamp, and he’s smiling mischievously and reaching for Armie’s belt buckle, saying, “this me-naked, you-clothed dynamic has got to go,” and he whips Armie’s belt off with a flourish and then bends and undoes the button on Armie’s jeans  _ with his teeth _ and something takes over, Armie lifts his hips to let Timmy slide his pants off him, down to the floor, who knows or cares where the pants end up. Because when Timmy nestles back in his lap again their cocks rest against each other for the first time, and before Armie can even process the sense of warmth, of  _ belonging _ that spreads through him at that touch, Timmy’s wrapped his hand around both of them, pressing their cocks together firmly, and Armie surrenders. He tips his head back to rest against the couch, closes his eyes, feels nothing but himself pressed against Timmy, and he feels like a fish that’s been trying to breathe air all its life and has just fallen into an ocean. He’s not entirely sure he’s ever breathed before this.

Timmy’s hand works furiously between Armie’s legs and he wants to say  _ wait, slow down, I don’t know if I’ll ever have this again _ but that also seems be a reason to keep going, faster, if this flame only burns once it might as well be seen from space. Timmy’s other hand scrabbles at the buttons on Armie’s shirt and Armie reaches to help him, pulling the dress shirt over his head, and when it’s off Timmy crashes forward into him, pressing their chests together, their full lengths touching everywhere now. Armie feels Timmy’s heart kick against his chest and Timmy rubs his nose under Armie’s chin, breathing faster now, and when he hears Timmy’s breath grow ragged Armie knows he can’t hold back much longer and he hisses into Timmy’s hair  _ close, so close _ and Timmy sighs  _ yes _ and moves his hand a few final times before they come, together, mixing their release on Timmy’s hand and Armie’s chest as Timmy leans his forehead against Armie’s with a giggle.

“God, I’m glad you came here,” Timmy sighs, grabbing his robe from the floor to clean them up. “I think about that kiss every time I pass the bar you took me to--what, three years ago now?”

“Yeah, three long years,” Armie chuckles, and then realizes what he’s just heard. “Wait, did you say--you’re still in New York?”   


“I could never leave it,” Timmy replies. “The art scene there just fits me, you know? I just came here to do this piece. I’m flying back tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.” Armie no longer recognizes his own voice and is as surprised as Timmy by the next things he says. “What...what flight?”

“4pm out of LAX. What? What?” Timmy stands up to get his clothes from a duffel bag in the corner but turns back when Armie starts laughing, a full throaty laugh. Armie swears he hasn’t laughed so sincerely in years.

“Me too, Tim. Me too. We’re going back to New York together. Even if I’d never come in here today I would have seen you on that plane.”

“You’re fucking kidding me.” Timmy has pulled on a pair of black jeans and his head fights its way through the neck of a Ramones T-shirt. “That’s like, the random luck of the universe or something.”

“But now that I know,” Armie murmurs hoarsely as he gets dressed, “I can make sure we’re sitting together the whole flight.”

“How are you going to do that?” Timmy asks, settling back on the couch and stretching his legs over Armie’s lap.

Armie gestures to himself. “For some reason people have trouble saying no to me. It’s a lifelong curse.”

“I bet it is,” Timmy teases, bumping Armie’s ribs with his foot.

“And if we sit next to each other I can spend the whole flight telling you what we’ll do when we get back to New York. What I’ll do to you at my apartment. I’ve got a nice four-post bed and some very discreet neighbors.” Timmy whines softly between his teeth. “What we can do at your place, even if you don’t have a lot of equipment. You’d be amazed what we can do with some neckties, ice cubes, and time. We can talk about all of this for  _ the whole flight _ , but it’s a shame we won’t be able to do anything about it until we land.” When Armie meets Timmy’s gaze he finds a fire there equal to his own, for the first time.

And if the flight to New York the next day goes exactly as Armie describes, well, maybe that’s the random luck of the universe too.

 

**FIVE YEARS LATER - NEW YORK, 1983**

_ Timmy _

All parties smell the same. When Timmy pulls the black silk T-shirt over his head it it smells like the party in London last week, which reminds him of the one in Paris the week before that. But tonight’s party was just a New York party, the kind he can stumble home from after the alcohol makes him forget that he came there hoping to forget something.

Once he stumbles home he instantly remembers.

The apartment is dark, and if there wasn’t snow falling outside to reflect light into the living room he might not be able to see Armie at all. Armie’s robe is the same cabernet color as the chair he’s sunk into, and when he hears Timmy at the door he turns his head so slowly it’s as if he’s forgotten movement, and the instructions for remembering were read long ago in a language not his own. There’s a rocks glass in his hand, though, and the bottle that sits empty on the coffee table across the room was still half full when Timmy left for the party.  _ So he moved sometime _ , Timmy knows, but from the rumpled state of the room around him it’s the only movement that’s gone on in the apartment all night.

“Hey,” Timmy chirps, with a brightness that sounds false even to his ears, which are drunkenly swimming toward clarity.

“Hey,” Armie murmurs, and seems to remember the motions for rising from his char and crossing the room. When he embraces Timmy in greeting it’s sad, desperate, a touch that asks rather than gives. The only thing that stops Timmy from saying something is the knowledge that his own answering embrace must feel the same way.

“How was the party?” Armie asks, running a hand through his hair and leaving it askew in a way that is not an improvement but which Timmy also finds adorable and so says nothing.

“It was really fun,” Timmy sighs, grabbing a sweater from the back of a nearby chair. He realizes too late that it’s not even his sweater, it’s Armie’s, but somehow the cable knit hanging over his hands and rolling off his shoulders makes him feel safer. If Armie’s going to hide inside a shell of himself tonight, Timmy decides he might as well do the same. “Andy was there. I feel like I’m finally getting a sense of him, he scared the hell out of me at first but then I realized he’s just hiding behind his amusement. That made it easier. And Lou was fucking  _ blitzed,  _ he was up on stage doing something he called music but I’m not sure anyone else agreed.”

Armie’s eyes had started wandering as soon as Timmy started to speak. Timmy isn’t sure if it’s a worse sign that it happened, or that it took so long for Timmy himself to notice. He softens his tone, knocks his head into Armie’s chest, takes Armie’s hand and leads him to the couch. “Hey,” he whispers, “sit for a second.”

“If you insist,” Armie murmurs, pliant in Timmy’s hands in a way that once would have thrilled him but now causes Timmy to furrow his brow in concern.

“You’re working too much,” Timmy whispers, nestling into a corner of the couch. When Armie sits absently besides him he’s nearly in Timmy’s lap, but it’s accidental, thoughtless, not playful like it once would have been. “I know these parties wear you out, they wear me out too. But maybe next Friday you could knock off early, come to a little dinner I got invited to? It’s gonna be small, just me and Robert and Patti. I wanna talk over some ideas with them and I wanna know what you think too.”

Armie’s smile is hopeful, and at first it makes Timmy smile too, softly, too slowly to be seen in the dim light. Then he realizes that Armie isn’t smiling at him, or at least not at the living, breathing version of Timmy beside him on the couch.

Taking up the entire wall opposite them is a giant black-and-white photo of Timmy. Robert Mapplethorpe had taken it three summers ago, in the basement of a rented house out in Montauk. Timmy’s torso looms from the black background, shirtless, skin gleaming white under a hair’s breadth of overexposure. His curls are askew, spidering away into the negative space around him. Dark eyeliner forms a waxing crescent beneath one eye. He’s biting his lip, his right hand blurred slightly by motion as he brings his index finger toward his mouth. At this size drops of sweat and grains of Long Island summer sand loom like planets on his skin. If you didn’t know better you’d think Timmy was looking at Robert like a dying man choosing the last fuck of his life.

But Timmy knew better, and Armie did too. Knew that it was Armie he had been looking at that day, as he stood behind Robert, no one in the room wearing a shirt, with a beleaguered fan beating overhead. Earlier that day they’d gotten day drunk on vodka and cheap orange juice, argued about Vladimir Mayakovsky, snuck away from the rest of the group to fuck, quickly, silently in a closet full of beach towels, biting each other’s tongues, Armie’s fingernails raking up Timmy’s thighs, Timmy panting against Armie’s mouth the only words they spoke:  _ more. There. Yes. Mmmm.  _ Later in the afternoon they’d share a joint, then another joint, start a bonfire on the beach. There was a party next door, wealthy Upper East Side types, and Robert suggested they all play hide-and-seek at the party, trying to slip behind the outdoor furniture and gaudy decorations without being seen by the partygoers or each other. That Timmy, that day, was what Armie was staring at with such hope. But now they were alone, and it was winter, and the liquor was gone, and when Armie’s eyes return to Timmy there’s a snap of disappointment in them. Then Armie’s eyes close to hide it, but Timmy had seen, and he closes his own eyes to hide that he’d seen Armie hiding. They were two burned-out houses facing each other across a wide road, looking for reflections, signs of life, in windows long ago broken.

Timmy opens his eyes, taps his lap, and tugs gently on Armie’s leg, a complex dance to obtain a result that once would have taken only a glance. Armie flutters his eyelids, sighs, but settles into the opposite end of the couch, stretching his legs into Timmy’s lap as Timmy begins gently rubbing his feet. Armie’s breathing evens out until anyone but Timmy would think he’s asleep, anyone who doesn’t know the slight snore that settles under Armie’s breath when he sleeps, the twitch of his head that means he’s dreaming. Timmy drops his head, kisses the top of Armie’s foot, and crawls up the length of his body to settle alongside him on the sofa. Armie wraps his left arm around Timmy, plays absently with his curls. There’s a softness to his touch that anyone else would call comfort. But to Timmy it feels unreliable, the softness of liquor flowing, with the hardness of cut glass underneath that he’s never felt from Armie before. In a few minutes Armie’s asleep. Timmy stays there until the morning, watching the snow fall out the window, hands tangled in Armie’s robe, but sleep never comes.

**FIVE YEARS LATER - BERGAMO, 1988**

_ Armie _

If he closes his eyes he’d swear this hotel bed feels just like the one in Barcelona two nights ago. Or the one in Berlin last week. All of them soft, the spines of the down feathers in the pillows caressing his cheek at night like thin familiar fingers. Yet all of them firm enough that Timmy doesn’t wake when Armie tosses and turns beside him. Doesn’t feel it when Armie sits beside him on the bed, sometimes for hours, watching him sleep.

Doesn’t know that this is what Armie has done, every night, for the past two weeks while they’ve been in Europe.

He’s doing it right now, staring down at the tangle of Timmy’s curls against the pillow, shorter now than ever before, the halo of a lesser saint but a saint nonetheless. Armie shakes his head in fond admiration. Timmy’s been sleeping a lot on this trip and no wonder: two solid weeks of meeting and greeting, schmoozing, gallery visits, all arranged by Timmy’s New York agent to make him bigger in Europe. Watching Timmy grow and bloom under the gaze of people who respect his talent, hearing him think aloud as ideas for work come to him in conversations with other artists, knowing that the flush that creeps up behind Timmy’s ears means he’s flattered but would never say so: all of this only makes Armie marvel at Timmy more. In his place, Armie would feel drained, wrung out. It’s what made him cut back on hours at work, finally, after he felt secure in his place at the publishing house and listened to Timmy about reducing stress and experiencing more of life together. Armie had finally stopped feeling like a glass helplessly overflowing with other people’s expectations, and he was proud of himself for that until he’d seen Timmy take in the same things, turn them, spin them until they shone. Timmy was the first person Armie had ever seen whose glass never overflowed, just grew larger until he was made of himself and the best of everyone he’d ever known.

Timmy sleeps, and dreams of things too unfathomably complex or beautiful or delicate for this world. And it’s as he watches that Armie knows if he keeps forcing Timmy’s curious, expansive, labile soul into the vessel of their lives together, it can only end one of two ways. Timmy’s life, spirit, talent can expand endlessly until it shatters the boundaries Armie has made for himself. And the force of that explosion would scatter the pieces so widely Armie could never gather them all up again, much less put them back into a semblance of what they were. Or Timmy will start adjusting, rearranging, losing parts of himself or others that he’s gained along the way in order to fit the shape Armie sees for their lives. Either one, Armie knows, would be a loss to the world, but more importantly a loss to Timmy. And Timmy doesn’t deserve to lose anything he’s earned in this life. Armie bends, places a kiss on Timmy’s temple, whispers, “goodbye.” He’s the only one who will ever know that he’s said this out loud. And he won’t leave that day, or the next, or the day they arrive back in New York, but at that moment he knows he will go. He’ll have to make it seem like it’s all his fault, something that shifted or was false in him, and that’s not the case but it’s the only way that will leave Timmy whole and able to make something blazing and gorgeous out of the experience. He runs his fingers through Timmy’s curls one last time while he still feels they’re in any way his to touch.

In the distance, a train whistle blows. Armie’s head snaps up to the window, but he can’t even see where the train is arriving from, much less guess at where it’s going.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm dreamofhorses42 on Tumblr, come say hi!


	6. The Lovers - Pianguan, China, 1988 - Timmy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The sun just starts to set over an ancient battlement to his left when he hears the footsteps. He opens his eyes and follows the sound, and sees Armie approaching from the right, the sun hitting him like a giant spotlight._
> 
> I added a lot of tags for angst because we're entering a period of pretty heavy emotions both for our boys and for the performance art I'm basing this on. You've been warned, but will probably also find hope in those tags too.

_ Timmy _

 

It’s only fitting that Timmy arrives first. It was his idea, after all. The wall that he’d felt growing between them for years, that he knew so well he could name each brick, each avoided glance, each instance of apathy disguised as miscommunication, clearly couldn’t be dismantled the same way it had been built. You can’t stand in the same place and expect the world to change around you.

 

Armie had been skeptical, to say the least. What he said was that it was a huge investment of time, money; hell, he didn’t even know if he was physically fit enough to do something like that. Timmy, by now fluent in what Armie never said, heard the truth. Armie was content to let them grow apart by inches, say less and less each day until one morning there was silence that didn’t end at midnight.

 

That had never been Timmy’s way of doing things. If there was a wall between them, then there might as well be a goddamn wall between them. He’d called his agent one night, not long after their tour of Europe had ended, said he wanted to walk the Great Wall of China as a performance piece.

 

“It’s a compelling idea, Tim, but that will take months. Your audience is going to lose interest unless you drag a camera crew with you.”

 

“Not months, weeks. I’m only going to walk half of it.”

 

“Um, no offense, Tim, but I’m not sure people will be that interested in you accomplishing half of something. Even half of something as fascinating as walking that wall.”

 

“Armie’s going to walk the other half. We’ll meet in the middle. Anyone who knows us or reads art magazines knows things aren’t perfect between us right now. We’ll know when we see each other again if we should continue, or let it go.”

 

His agent couldn’t have booked their plane tickets fast enough.

 

Timmy had started in Hushan, practically Korea, the sun rising over the Yellow Sea at his back when he took his first steps. At lunchtime he’d stopped for chicken, rice, and tea from a stall in an alleyway, then eaten in the plaza, squinting into the noontime sun. When he’d finished his tea he’d peered at the leaves for several seconds, remembering that people used to see their futures there. But what he saw could have been an airplane, or an eye shedding a tear, or an arrow piercing the middle of a heart and binding it forever. Eventually Timmy had abandoned the idea and gotten back on his feet again.

 

Every time he’d had tea since, he’d been sure to leave just enough in the cup to obscure what the leaves might tell him.

 

He’d sat on the steps of the Forbidden City, stared at the horizon, smoked an unfiltered cigarette he’d bought in a market off Tianenmen Square. It had probably been ten years since he’d smoked. It tasted like the last time he’d felt nothing in his life was worth preserving.

 

In Datong he’d stopped to rest for a couple of days and ended up at a hanging temple recommended to him by the old man who had sold him cigarettes. He’d tried not to think about what it meant that he was still smoking. The temple was beautiful, built right into the side of a cliff, erasing the separation between earth and the heavens. Timmy had stepped to the edge, looked straight down. There was a thrill to the emptiness that stretched below him. The thrill was familiar. It was how he’d started to feel when he looked into Armie’s eyes, and he’d tried not to think about what that meant either.

 

But now here he is, at their predetermined halfway point, with a couple of hours to kill and no real excuse not to think about any of those things. There’s no art-world party to duck out to, telling himself that maybe if he gives Armie space to think, Armie will stop thinking of reasons to leave. There’s no fancy vacation spot here, already half a world from home, where Timmy can use money from his newest commission and plan a week on an island or a river cruise, only to see in Armie’s eyes that he now believes he deserves Timmy even less than he did before. Timmy can’t even bury himself in work; he’s already living it, right now. He’s made three or four pieces--some of them his favorites, his best work--just to try and show Armie how he feels, to show him when telling has failed. And that doesn’t work either. His talent, which has saved him from every other possible failure in life, can’t save him from Armie standing in a gallery doorway and looking at Timmy with pride,  _ such pride _ , as he performs his works, but it’s a pride that distances. Timmy’s tried so many times to tell Armie  _ look, it’s the same thing in you that makes you argue for an hour to include one single poem in an anthology because you just know it fits. It’s the thing in you that knows the poem fits in the first place. It’s you knowing exactly what food cures my twelve different kinds of unhappiness. It’s the same light. It’s not even that I’m a sun and you’re a moon, we’re just in the same orbit, held in place by nothing but each other.  _ But every time Timmy tries to tell Armie this, the distance between them grows wider. It flickers behind Armie’s eyes:  _ you’re just saying that, don’t patronize, you don’t know your own talent, Tim.  _ And everything Timmy does to try and fix it, show Armie his own inner light, seems to make Armie feel less deserving, so Timmy tries to fix  _ that _ , and suddenly one day they’re two planets who no longer orbit each other but whose gravity has fallen out of alignment so that every move they think is towards each other really drives them further away.

 

Timmy lights a cigarette. It’s the last one in the pack, and that feels oddly appropriate. He smokes for some time with his eyes closed, just leaning on this wall that has seen heartbreak and bloodshed and love and entire planets dying out in the night sky overhead. The sun just starts to set over an ancient battlement to his left when he hears the footsteps. He opens his eyes and follows the sound, and sees Armie approaching from the right, the sun hitting him like a giant spotlight.

 

It happens, just like he intended it would. Timmy hoped that whatever lessons they learned, whatever they were told or thought they were told by a mute block of centuries-old stone that was still somehow easier to traverse than the distance between him and Armie, would snap into place as soon as they saw each other, and they would  _ know _ . They would know on sight whether whatever parts of each other they had carried for 2500 kilometers were worth holding on to. And that’s what happens.

 

As Timmy sees Armie approaching, he knows immediately what he has to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm dreamofhorses42 on Tumblr, come say hi!


	7. The Lovers - Pianguan, China, 1988 - Armie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He opens his mouth to say the only thing he can think of, the only thing his mind can zero in on at a time like this, a totally insignificant “hello,” when he hears Timmy inhale and prepare to speak first.
> 
> Armie knows what he’s going to say.
> 
> *Yes, things are getting angsty. But bear in mind I love these boys too much to let them suffer in the end. And thank you to whoever's still reading after my recent bout of writer's block. Without my Discord folks for motivation I probably would have given up entirely so thanks guys.*

_ Armie _

 

If he’d been in Jiayuguan for any other reason, Armie probably would have been surprised to find camels and snow in the same place.

But since he’s here after years of ice and silence, punctuated by days-long bursts of heat and sweat and passion that leave him rubbing his eyes in confusion for days afterward, when Armie  stepped off the plane and saw a camel silhouetted against a snow-capped mountain, all he could do was smile. It was somewhere between bitterness and resignation, and even he couldn’t say which was closer.

The first thing he noticed about the wall when he arrived at the pass was that it wasn’t made of bricks and stone like the photos he’d seen. The wall here was made of the yellow sand all around them, forced under pressure to become something harder than it wanted to be, to blend in better, because a regular wall would have cracks between the stones and that’s too vulnerable, a chance that couldn’t be taken.

Armie had fallen to his knees and kissed the wall when he saw that, so strongly did he know that feeling.

By the time he reached Yinchuan the snow had disappeared. Arid desert stretched in every direction, and Armie knew that feeling too. He’d been on his feet for hundreds of miles, and at first every new mile had made him cry, knowing he was that many steps closer to the end. Then he only cried every ten miles, then every fifty. When he stopped for rest in Yinchuan he realized he didn’t even know how long it had been since he’d last cried. The wind whipped dry sand into his eyes, and he barely noticed the difference.

Yinchuan seemed to be a shrine to things bigger than humanity. There was a pagoda so big Armie couldn’t photograph all of it at once. A mosque with seafoam minarets and so many gold accents he couldn’t tell where the building ended and the sunlight began. Buddhas carved into mountains in the countryside, appearing so abruptly before him that he startled, jumped backward as if stone could chase after him. And yet. And yet. The green minarets just recalled a familiar pair of eyes. The massive Buddhas reminded him that his only feelings of reverence had come on his knees before a man who was both achingly human and so ethereal that Armie still marveled every time he took Timmy’s slender wrist in his hand.

He tried to deserve it. At every turn he asked himself which path to take to earn the looks of adoration, surprise, amusement that still stopped him in his tracks when Timmy fixed them on him full-force. But no matter what, he still felt like he was in a Greek myth where a god came to earth to kill time, to learn something about himself, and then ascended back to where he belonged, leaving Armie cold and alone in an atelier, only a note of honeysuckle on the breeze to show that anyone was there at all.

By the time he reached Yulin he’d started suspecting what he might say. Timmy’s idea was that they would wait until they saw each other, let the feelings hit them like lightning, and maybe that would work for Timmy. He’d always been able to let things hit him full force, know what to take from them and what to let wash away. That’s never been how Armie worked, and now he starts to regret never taking the time to fully explain that, to say to Timmy, “maybe if you’d let me build a foundation first, let me feel my feet under me, I could have let you show me how to fly. But I can’t just jump. What you call soaring I call falling, and I need you to know why.”

In Yulin he spent a day along a river lined with pagodas. His hotel desk clerk asked if he’d like to book a tour guide, but suddenly it was appealing to spend an entire day without understanding language, writing, any of the tools used to distance people from their ideas. Autumn was coming; the leaves were blown from the trees and the wind had a cold snap to it. Armie stood at the edge of the river and let other people’s words flow around him. If only he’d learned earlier to speak without words, to listen when Timmy tried to tell him things through action. That might have earned him  _ some _ of the respect he’d always seen in Timmy’s eyes.

This wasn’t that world, though. That’s what Armie thinks as he climbs the crest in the wall, drawing ever closer to where he’s arranged to meet Timmy. Of course Timmy was there first; he was always first, comfortable being alone, comfortable showing others the way, comfortable saying  _ hey, here. welcome. I made things nice for you while I waited. _

The sun is behind Timmy; Armie sees him first in silhouette. He’s smoking, watching the sunset, curls delineated against the light like a naughty Victorian cameo. Armie wishes he could freeze Timmy like this, or even as he was years ago, leaning in a doorway, eyes both mischievous and trusting. Wishes he could stop Timmy there and say  _ wait. Wait until I catch up. Wait until I don’t feel the earth move under me every time you want to try something new, because your ideas don’t hurt but other people’s have, they’ve made me cry and give up and not want to trust, and I don’t want to bring those things to you but they’re part of me, they come with me, just leave your hand in mine until I know it won’t hurt me and I’ll be yours forever. _

Timmy turns, sees him, and suddenly Armie knows what Timmy means about waiting for that moment. He sees something snap into place behind Timmy’s eyes and he’s not sure if he hopes or fears that his eyes say the same thing. He closes the final few feet of distance and folds Timmy into his embrace, the dust on their clothes mingling, carrying the whole of the Great Wall between them. He puts his nose to Timmy’s hair, inhales, looking for comfort but finding Timmy now smells of cigarettes, days-old alcohol, the water of rivers Armie has never seen. He opens his mouth to say the only thing he can think of, the only thing his mind can zero in on at a time like this, a totally insignificant “hello,” when he hears Timmy inhale and prepare to speak first.

Armie knows what he’s going to say.

Timmy’s grip relaxes. He takes a breath deeper than Armie has ever heard, that draws air from the bottom of the valley below them. But his voice, when it comes, is a whisper.

“Goodbye, Armie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm dreamofhorses42 on Tumblr, come say hi!


	8. The Artist Is Present - Manhattan, 2012 - Timmy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I was gone, but I had to be, we had to be apart to be together, we were bricks without mortar and now we can build together instead of walling each other out._
> 
>  
> 
> Real life decided to conspire against me ever finishing this fic, but IT IS COMPLETED NOW! I will be putting up the next three chapters over the next three days. We're slowly digging ourselves out of the well of angst. Thank you so much to everyone who patiently took this journey with me. It's been such a ride, and so fun to create.

_ Timmy _

 

He’d thought it would be quieter.

 

When he’d come up with what he now referred to in his head as  _ this fucking crazy idea, how did I think this would work, I may very well go crazy and I guess there's an artistic point to that but I'd like to be here and sane to see it _ , all he’d wanted was some peace and quiet in his head. 

 

It had been a loud 24 years. 

 

First there had been flashbulbs, everywhere, as soon as he walked past Armie, to the nearest brick tower on the Great Wall, and down to the ground, where a man in the crowd pocketed a ring, clearly meant to be offered to his date if things on the wall had gone a different way. 

 

Timmy envied the man's hope. 

 

Then there had been the cars, so many cars in so many cities. Timmy within them at first, being driven, never seeing his drivers’ eyes as he was shuttled from art show to art show. Profiled: “He Gave Up Love For Art”. It wasn't true, but it sold. 

 

For a while even Timmy bought it. 

 

Then he realized the men he brought home for one night, one hour, were the only people who looked him in the eye anymore. Maybe that's  _ why _ he'd been bringing them home. 

 

Finally the noise was low, unavoidable, a hum that Timmy was convinced kept his brain from discovering things that mattered. He'd drive himself through the New York streets, squinting at the same station each time, hoping this time maybe there would be a man outside twirling a rose. Smiling. Saying  _ of course I'm here. I was gone, but I had to be, we had to be apart to be together, we were bricks without mortar and now we can build together instead of walling each other out. _

 

The closest he came was a man standing in the same spot each Thursday night, twirling a cigarette between his fingers and then discarding it. If Timmy squinted hard enough it looked like a bloom, like life instead of ashes.

 

Then, one day late last fall, at Saoirse’s walk-up in Chelsea, Timmy picked up his beer from the newspaper he was using as a coaster and saw a damp circle around a familiar face. “Publishing Magnate Returns To New York, Triumphant,” the headline blared. Timmy swore the photo was in color, but of course when he looked again it was black and white. Those eyes were only that blue in his memory. “Armand Hammer returns to take the reigns of a major publishing house...decades of success abroad have made him the toast of New York’s literary scene...come into his own over the past years as an unerring mentor to many of today’s superstar authors….” There were photos. Armie, braced against a stone column, listening intently to a political scion whose autobiography had sold millions of copies. Armie, slinging his arm casually around the shoulder of a Brazilian poet whose work Armie had discovered and whose career he’d then managed at first, hammering out large advances and tagging along on a book tour until the author was comfortable. Armie with a woman, tall and willowy and looking so much like Timmy that he recoiled in false recognition when he saw the photo. The caption spoke of a whirlwind marriage, a quick annulment. “Since then, Hammer has focused on his career and says often that this is where he now finds his fulfillment.”

 

Timmy had to stop reading. His knees softened and it was a good thing a chair was behind him. The paper fell limply to the floor and Timmy bowed his head, stared at his knees. It was the first time his world had been quiet in 24 years.

 

That’s how Saoirse found him, still seated, head still bowed, a full three hours later.

 

The noise came flooding back as soon as she spoke. “Timmy, are you OK? I know I said I’d only be an hour but coffee turned into drinks turned into arguing about Jeff Koons. Hell of a first date, though. Greta, her name was...definitely gonna see her again. Have you just been...sitting here...the whole time?” She hooked a finger under his chin, scratched him lightly like a recalcitrant puppy. He raised his eyes to meet hers, but all he wanted was the silence back. The silence that hung between them before she spoke, when she could have said anything in the world. A silence that went back 24 years, when he’d broken it by saying the one word in the entire world that he didn’t mean.

 

“Sersh, I have an idea.”

 

****

 

The gallery thought he was insane. “You’re going to do what?” asked the assistant, tailing him through the cavernous space, scribbling notes with an unnecessarily expensive pencil.

 

“I’m going to sit. Here.” Photos of Timmy have already begun to be installed all around them. He stands in the midst of likenesses of himself and chuckles darkly at the idea that he himself is smaller than any of the reproductions. He gestures, draws a table in the air. “Anyone who wants to can sit across from me. As long as they want. No speaking, no touching, just being. For the longest time I thought I’d talked too much and I needed to listen. Tried listening, turns out words are the problem. I’m just going to be here, 8 hours a day, in the silence people have to sit in when they can’t open their mouths to fuck it all up.”

 

He designed a special chair so that he could stay seated for eight hours at a time. Consulted a doctor, arranged for water and nutrient drinks and planned meals and exercise for the off hours to keep his body healthy. He and Saoirse designed a tunic that he would wear every day. “I know this piece is you putting your heart on your sleeve, but this is ridiculous,” she teased him about the Valentine-red hue. She punched playfully at his arm but pulled away when she saw he wasn’t laughing. When he put the tunic on for the first time he saw she’d sewn a patch into it, a heart, on the inside of one sleeve. No one would see it but Timmy, and he felt its outline more keenly against his skin every hour he wore it.

 

Then he sat. And watched the entire world go by.

 

On his first day he sat for almost an hour before anyone had the courage to sit across from him. The first person was an art student type, a thin guy in his mid-20s, thick black-rimmed glasses. He locked eyes with Timmy for a couple of minutes, a long time to stare at someone, really, when there’s nothing else going on, but his gaze was distant, analytical. Timmy knew as soon as the kid stood up he was going to go and write a paper about it for a class at the Learning Annex. The last person to sit in front of him that day was a mother, her downy-haired infant on her lap. She made eye contact longer than anyone else that day, a good ten minutes or so, playing with the child’s hair, tickling its neck, soothing it in the silence without ever looking away. When she moved to go, the child caught Timmy’s eye and burst into tears immediately. It was all Timmy could do not to do the same.

 

That first day was the hardest. After that the procession in front of Timmy began to blur into a rainbow. Giggling schoolkids. Curious tourists. A few famous people came: rappers whose music Timmy liked, some of Timmy’s more famous art world friends, a film director who left her business card with Timmy’s assistant on her way out. Even in the silence, those interactions felt transactional. Timmy felt like he should be asking permission to blink, or somehow performing in a way that went against everything he was trying to do. Saoirse came, about halfway through the month. She stayed in the chair a full hour, even a few minutes beyond, and when she got up Timmy knew the next time he saw her he would give her the most bone-crushing hug imaginable. All the things that had hung unsaid between them over the years, about lust and reason and what would have made a 23-year-old girl stand naked across a doorway from a man she hardly knew: those things would never need saying between them now.

 

And now, on the final day, Timmy realizes that what he’s been seeing most in the stream of humanity is New York itself. New York is in the hundreds upon hundreds of people who never sit across from him at all, blending into the crowd but making a texture that would leave the gallery cold and echoing if it disappeared. It’s in the few who sit across from him for ten seconds or half an hour, and then whisper things to him in languages he doesn’t speak before they stand up to go. It’s in the people who have come here to learn, or to make money, or just to try and live a life bigger than their dreams, and who somehow wandered through the door of this gallery, this day, to this chair, to meet his eyes and let him witness just a moment of the life they’re trying to make.  _ No wonder Armie wanted to come back here, even after all this time, even after all his success in every other corner of the world _ , Timmy thinks. It’s the final hour of the show, no one’s across from him right now, and he’s staring at the spot of paint he’s come to know so well on the wall across from him. If he breathes properly the spot looks like it’s breathing too.  _ He came back here even after us. He loved this place enough to come back to where we began, even after we’d ended. Come to think of it, so did I _ . These are the thoughts Timmy would have drowned out with noise, if he were in his other life, the life with noise in it. Here, there’s only silence. He’s gotten used to these thoughts, to letting them arise without upsetting him. He chuckles to himself at the possibility that what he needed all along was not to sit across from this endless stream of people, but to sit across from no one at all.

 

Suddenly there’s a murmur at the back of the crowd. Timmy resists the urge to look; a few times there have been incidents, mild ones: people trying to sneak into the chair carrying signs or otherwise seeking attention, mild medical incidents like patrons fainting, once a child that had been separated from its parents. Never anything Timmy needs to worry about. He sees motion at the corner of his vision, that means someone has stepped into the square and announced intent to sit, and witness.

 

There’s a blur of activity across from him, a cable-knit sweater and a rush of a woodsy cologne, a thick shock of hair that you’d still swear was blonde till you looked close enough to see the ashen gray it had become.

 

And then Timmy’s gaze meets a pair of eyes the color of the sky in 24 years’ worth of dreams.

 

_ Armie. _

 

Well, that’s the first thing he wants to say, anyway. The irony is so thick that he breaks, for the first time in the 30 days he’s been sitting there, half an hour from the end, and he looks down at his lap, chuckles grimly, shakes his head. He’s had two chances in life now to speak, to say the single most important things he may ever say to Armie, and the first time he said the wrong words. Now he can’t even speak at all.

 

No, this time it will have to be Armie who speaks.

 

Timmy raises his head, meets Armie’s gaze. The years have been kind to him. He’s lightly tanned, probably from the recent European sun. He’s in a thick, cable-knit sweater, such a gorgeous shade of cornflower blue that it’s all the more impressive when his eyes put it to shame. Timmy realizes that if all this experience, this practice at just  _ being _ that he’s gained over the past 30 days, was leading him toward something, then it was a futile effort. Because here is the one person who can end the noise in his head permanently, whose touch instantly narrows his world to  _ now, here _ . And Timmy has no idea what Armie’s thinking.

 

A few things seem to flicker past behind Armie’s eyes, but then he always was good at keeping the shutters closed in his mind when he wanted to. The thought makes Timmy smile again, and this time he doesn’t hide it, just keeps eye contact with Armie, quirks up the corner of his mouth to show some sort of friendliness.  _ Truce? _ The same set of emotions flickers past on Armie’s face again. There’s amusement, affection, but also fear. Regret. Uncertainty.

 

Armie makes as if to reach across the table. Others have tried this, tried to touch or reach for Timmy during the performance and security has instantly stopped it. Timmy gives a shake of his head, still never looking away from Armie’s eyes, hoping that will be enough to signal that he wants to see this through. 

 

Armie rests his hands in the center of the table, open, waiting. He opens his mouth to speak.


	9. The Artist Is Present - Manhattan, 2012 - Armie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Armie realizes he might need a lifetime to say what he wants to say._
> 
> _Figures. When he needs a lifetime of words what he has are a few seconds of silence. So he steps onto the mat and pulls out the chair._

Armie’s on his way uptown to his sublet on the Upper East Side when the kid almost bowls him over. Head down, buried in her phone, rushing out a door onto the sidewalks, fingers swiping madly. “Hey, watch out, huh? You could hurt somebody.” Armie places a hand gently on the kid’s shoulder, tries not to sound upset or threatening, but as usual his size precedes him and the kid backs away, terrified, nodding.  _ Huh. That girl was still in her school uniform. Came straight from class to...an art gallery? _ Armie smiles ruefully.  _ Of course this would be a gallery. I’m back in town less than a day and here I am again _ . It also doesn’t surprise him that the air from the gallery is warm, inviting on this fall day. The first chill of winter is in the air.  _ Well, what can it hurt? Why rush back to an empty room?  _

 

He walks through the door and would immediately turn to walk back out again, if he would have trusted his legs to carry him. Instead he leans into the door frame, hangs onto it like a drowning man, until the patrons milling around start to eye him suspiciously and the waiter at the open bar smoothly lowers the wine out of view and refuses to catch Armie’s eye. For right in front of him looms the giant portrait of Timmy that had been taken on Long Island so many years ago. If anything it’s grown more beautiful since Armie saw it last, or perhaps his memory just wasn’t made to hold something that cosmic. Instinctively Armie moves toward the photo, hand outstretched--this used to hang in his home, after all, he’s  _ dusted its frame _ for god’s sake, and he’s touched the face in it too, the face that used to smile a special smile only for him, until the days when he found out there was also a way those eyes cried that was for him and him alone.

 

“Excuse me, sir, you can’t touch the artwork.” The voice is stern, firm, alarmingly close, and the worst thing about it is how impersonal it is. To the guard, Armie’s just an overly enthusiastic viewer, someone to protect Timmy’s likeness from. Too young to know there was ever a history where Timmy was the one bringing Armie pain.

 

Armie steps back silently, obediently. He winds his way through the other rooms of the gallery, all filled with Timmy. Video screens play his best-known works. Armie has been there for most of them. There’s grainy 16mm footage of them walking off the Great Wall in separate directions, playing simultaneously on a split screen. Armie writes “too on the nose” on a comment card for the piece, drops it in a box. Signs his own name to it;  _ let’s see if they believe it was really me. _ There are two more portraits, each as large as the Mapplethorpe and taken a decade or so apart. One looks to be from the late 1990s, has a muted color palette. Timmy’s wearing baggy suit pants, a half undone tie, waving the suit jacket in the air and screaming toward something unseen to the right of the frame.

 

The last portrait hangs at the exit to the room, before a short well-lit hallway leading to the next part of the exhibit. Armie checks the caption; the photo was taken three years earlier. It’s candid, or carefully posed to appear so. Timmy leans against a dark wooden railing, shot from below, and would be silhouetted against the bright sky behind him were it not for the photographer’s skill. As it is every detail of his face and hair are clear. He’s turning as if to someone behind him; he’s smiling, and it shows the laugh lines that have always threatened to break free at the corners of his eyes. His face is less pale than Armie remembers, a little weathered. There are several freckles at his temples that Armie’s sure weren’t there before. Timmy wears a simple oatmeal-colored thermal and his hair is past his shoulders, pulled back into a half-bun. half-ponytail that is unraveling in the wind. At the sight of the gray streaks in Timmy’s curls, Armie wishes he could sink through the gallery floor, to the center of the earth, or anywhere with gravity so strong it could take him back to watch every giggle and tear that he’d missed through all these years. Timmy’s hands are clasped loosely together in front of him, and Armie hates himself for checking Timmy’s left hand for a wedding band. But he won’t pretend he isn’t happy to see that finger is empty.

 

And then Armie walks down the short hallway beside the portrait, enters a large airy room, and sees before him the answer to that question as well as every other one that had kept him awake at night for the past twenty-four years.

 

Timmy sits at an elegant black table, minimalist yet clearly very well-designed. The room around him is empty, painted white. He and the table sit at the center of a square mat of black rubber, with a single white wooden chair across from him, facing him. Timmy’s wearing a bright red tunic that hangs to his knees, hair still long and pulled back tightly this time into a small bun at the nape of his neck. He’s absolutely immobile despite the room full of people staring at him expectantly, as if he’s the one who should take action here. Somehow, miraculously considering his height, Armie has managed to enter the room unnoticed. As he watches, a woman with a long gray ponytail and kind eyes sits down in the chair across from Timmy and holds his gaze. 

 

Armie wonders if anyone else who has witnessed this piece knows as well as he does what it’s doing to Timmy. To anyone who didn’t know Timmy’s face like Armie does, it would look like he’s stoic, absorbing, observing. Only Armie notices the throb of a tiny pulse at Timmy’s temple when the woman first sits down, his stress at not knowing what’s to come. He sees the quirk at the corner of Timmy’s mouth when the woman blows him a kiss; that means he’s trying against all odds not to smile. When she leaves, the woman takes a rose she’s wearing behind her ear and lays it on the seat. It’s photogenic, the red rose on the white seat, Timmy in red across from her. The staff photographers leap into action, grab some shots for posterity or a future catalog of Timmy’s work. One sets up right in front of Armie, and when he’s grabbed his shot he turns without looking, bumps into Armie, excuses himself and starts to maneuver away. But it’s too late. Armie’s cover is blown. The crowd parts around him, murmuring. A glance at his watch tells him he has half an hour to make this right. Half an hour to find out if Timmy meant what he said on the wall. Half an hour to somehow make Timmy understand that  _ there’s a reason we set off in different directions half a lifetime ago and a full world away but that reason is exactly fucking this, here and now, we had to walk away by choice so we could be here by chance. Now for god’s sake please kiss me or I don’t know what else I’ll ever believe in again. _

 

When he puts it like that Armie realizes he might need a lifetime to say what he wants to say.

 

Figures. When he needs a lifetime of words what he has are a few seconds of silence. So he steps onto the mat and pulls out the chair.

 

He sweeps the rose into the pocket of his sweater as he sits. The thought of destroying it is too much to bear. When he settles into the seat Timmy blinks at him, bewildered, a few times, and Armie watches half a dozen emotions play out on Timmy’s face, but just for him, in only the places Armie alone would look. It’s like an entire symphony played only at the corners of a harp. Armie used to kiss the corners of Timmy’s mouth, in the mornings, sleep-blind and unsure where his kisses were landing; those corners twitch ever so slightly and Armie knows Timmy wishes he could cry. Timmy’s eyes don’t move, but somehow the laugh lines at the corners deepen like he’s pulling puppet strings under his skin. It reminds Armie of nothing so much as the days they would rent a boat, spend all day just floating off Catalina Island, beers in hand and Timmy’s wide grin staying glued to his face all day. It was days like those that dug those laugh lines in the first place, set them for the future, for a time when Timmy might want to look in the mirror and remember a whole week’s worth of days with a single grin.

 

Armie’s hands are digging into his thighs. Timmy’s green eyes are glowing as they rest on him. It’s like watching a sunrise through the forest canopy, and Armie knows this is his moment. The last time they were here it was Timmy who had to speak, who had brought them on a life-changing journey to say an even more life-changing word. As he meets Timmy’s gaze now, Armie knows that they are both past the point in life where a single word can change anything. Even if it’s the exact word you want to hear, they’ve both seen too much, heard too much, know that the exact word you want to hear now will be the last one you might want to hear later. They know that nothing hurts so much as hearing “I love you” the first time you dread having to say it back.

 

Armie rests his hands in the center of the table, open, waiting. He opens his mouth to speak.

 

Timmy’s watching. He’s got that laser focus on Armie that used to make him nervous, used to make him feel undeserving. Now it excites him. He knows there are things in him worthy of that level of attention. Armie reaches one hand back to his pocket, pulls out the rose. Offers it to Timmy on an upturned palm.

 

Timmy’s eyes fill with tears. He reaches out. Armie feels his touch before their hands even connect, feels like all the space between their atoms collapses until there’s no way to tell whose hand is whose, only that they were never meant to be separate at all. Armie presses the rose into Timmy’s palm, wraps Timmy’s long fingers around it. With his other hand he interlaces their fingers together, and he speaks.

“Hi, Tim. Hello, my love.”


	10. EPILOGUE - CREMA, ITALY, May 2016 - Timmy & Armie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _This place is theirs. They’re home._

 

“Moscazzano?”

 

“Yes, sir,” the driver answers. “One of the tires is just a bit low and after this there’s not another town for a while. Once we get into the Alps it will be really hard to stop for air if we need it. There’s a station in Moscazzano, it won’t take ten minutes. My apologies.”

 

“It’s fine,” Armie replies. “We’re in no rush.” He grins down at Timmy, whose head rests on Armie’s shoulder. He’s fast asleep, newly trimmed curls tickling Armie’s neck when he breathes. “Hey, Tim, hey, wake up for a second. We’re stopping in Moscazzano to air up the tires.” Armie ruffles Timmy’s hair affectionately until he hears the familiar  _ hmmph _ s Timmy makes as he awakens. Armie plants a kiss on top of Timmy’s head, breathes in the rosewater scent of his shampoo. It calms him. They’ve been traveling for what seems like days but is really only hours, especially with the time zone changes. The French side of Timmy’s family is vacationing in Valbondione, in the Italian Alps, and had invited Armie and Timmy to join them, which would have been relaxing until a series of transit strikes had forced them to land in Milan and hire a car to drive them the rest of the way.

 

“We’ve been thinking of moving to Europe anyway, Armie, you know that,” Timmy had said, and it was true. New York would always be the place where they’d met and then come together again, but it was cast in amber in each of their hearts now, no need for a daily reminder.  _ Show me where you were in those years when we were apart _ , Timmy says in bed in the mornings, brow furrowed, licking coffee from his lips.  _ I want to see where you became someone who finally let me love you. _ So off they’d gone to Milan, and of course since it was Timmy’s idea to _ look around _ , to  _ see _ and  _ explore _ , it took him less than ten minutes in the car to fall asleep on Armie’s shoulder, snoring softly against his striped sweater.

 

While the driver converses in fluent Italian with the service station attendant, Armie motions down the road, taps his watch.  _ We’re taking a walk, just a few minutes. Killing the time. _ The driver nods. Timmy’s stretching, sleep slowly fading from his face, and he lets Armie sling an arm over his shoulder and casually lead him down the road out of town, running his fingers idly along the stone walls that line the roadway.

 

They’ve walked ten minutes or so out of town, Timmy’s arm wrapped as far around Armie’s waist as it will reach, head on Armie’s shoulder, when they reach a locked gate with a villa looming behind it like a fairy-tale castle. A FOR SALE placard swings from the bars. Timmy’s eyes brighten and he skips up to the entryway,  _ skips _ like he’s a damn teenager instead of a man in his sixties, and Armie feels his heart surrender for the fiftieth, or maybe it’s the thousandth, time. He nods an answer to the unasked question.  _ Yes, of course. Let’s go inside _ , and he watches Timmy open the green door beside the locked gate. If he didn’t know better Armie would swear the hinge sounds like a perfectly tuned piano.

 

The grounds are immaculate in an imperfect way, flawlessly pruned fruit trees resting alongside tangles of brush and ferns. Timmy’s walking slowly, sometimes in circles, sometimes staring at his feet and sometimes straight up at the upper floor windows, as if he sees someone there. Armie’s feet crunch on the gravel driveway. He takes Timmy’s hand as they walk into the foyer and can’t help running his other hand over the doorway, the bannister, all the surfaces of the house as they pass them. It’s all foreign yet oddly familiar, as if Armie needs only touch these textures he’s never seen before and they’ll be reabsorbed into him where they somehow belong.

 

“Can I help you?” a voice calls from a door to their right, and Armie follows Timmy into an airy kitchen lined with copper pots that look solid gold in the morning sun. A tall, lanky man in a suit leans against the kitchen island, flipping through a folder of papers. At their entrance, he straightens, offers his hand. “Luca Guadagnino. I’m the agent taking care of this sale. Please look around all you’d like and let me know if you have any questions.” His handshake is warm, friendly, yet businesslike, but his eyes are mischievous.

 

“Thank you,” Armie murmurs, already lost in the atmosphere of the place. He turns to ask Timmy what he thinks, but he’s already gone. 

 

Armie finds Timmy upstairs, on a balcony that overlooks the driveway where they entered. Despite the loud tile flooring Timmy doesn’t hear Armie’s approach, and for a moment Armie just watches. Timmy’s back is straight, hands braced against the railing, one heel off the ground and circling absently. He looks content, peaceful, and so young that if it weren’t for his silver curls Armie would swear he’s the 19-year-old Timmy that Armie came upon in a gallery at what might have been the last moment of his life.  _ And instead it was the first moment of our life _ , Armie thinks as he walks to join Timmy on the balcony. When Timmy turns to face him, the years between them telescope into the space between their eyes. Armie sees the boy Timmy was when they met, the boy Armie thought was a man until he saw how much more Timmy could grow, where his mind went once it had a chance to be shaped by the world. And Timmy sees in Armie’s eyes the same love, the same admiration he’d always seen there, free of the film of doubt that had hung there for so many years, so thin and persistent that Timmy hadn’t even known it was there. Then Armie had sat down across from him four years earlier and met his gaze, and Timmy had realized that what he’d thought was a lake was really an ocean, that Armie had finally opened up to him,  _ for _ him, completely. Every time they’d thought over the years apart  _ if only he was here to see this  _ is visible now in each other’s eyes.

 

Timmy smiles, a slow grin that starts at one corner of his mouth and spreads slowly to the other. Armie leans into him, glancing down the hallway to make sure the real estate agent won’t come upon them and find them being unprofessional.

 

“Can I kiss you?” Armie asks mischievously.

“Yes, please,” Timmy whispers, not breaking eye contact.

 

When their lips meet it feels somehow like their first kiss, or even earlier than that, the meeting of their lips in some cosmic place before they parted, to be placed in separate bodies and challenged to find each other again in the physical world. The kiss goes on forever and is over far too soon.

 

“Let’s--” Armie begins.

 

“Yes.”

 

With no further words exchanged they entwine their fingers and walk down the winding stairs back to the kitchen. Luca looks up again at their entry. “Well, what did you think?”

 

“We love it. We--” Timmy breaks off the sentence to look at Armie. “We’re going to be very happy here. We’ll take it.”

 

“Wonderful.” Luca sighs in relief. “It’s the strangest thing. Such a lovely property, great location, and yet...you two are the only ones who have been here to see it. It must have been waiting for you.”

 

A shiver passes up Armie’s spine.  _ Must be a draft somewhere. I’ll look into that once we’ve moved in _ .

 

“If you wouldn’t mind waiting here, I’ll run to my office and grab some paperwork. I won’t be more than fifteen minutes.” Luca’s already in sale mode, shoving papers haphazardly into his briefcase.

 

“Of course,” Timmy murmurs.

 

When the front door closes behind Luca, they walk slowly, reverently up the winding staircase again, aiming for the same small balcony. Armie starts to poke his head into the rooms, one at a time, imagining new uses for them in their life there together.

 

“Psst. Come here,” Armie whispers from a doorway near the balcony. Timmy follows, peers into a small bedroom containing two twin beds and a weathered dresser. A door is open to the room beyond, and to a window, also open, that’s letting in a spring breeze. It smells of peaches and freshwater. There must be a lake nearby.

 

Armie pushes the two twin beds together, flops down onto one of them, pats the spot beside him. Timmy curls up against his side, closes his eyes. He can hear Armie’s heartbeat. It’s in time with his own.

 

The spring breeze picks up, ruffling their hair. From the roadway they hear a car horn and somewhere, distantly, music. Luca will be back soon. 

 

This place is theirs. They’re home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm dreamofhorses42 on Tumblr, come say hi!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Artist is Present Cover](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18012575) by [speakfree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/speakfree/pseuds/speakfree)




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